Strap yourselves in, postmodernism fans. This is a book within a book, based on a true story. Well, not true-true. That is to say, the true story that is fictionalized in The Afterparty (the book-within-a-book) isn’t actually true: It is a figment of the imagination of the author of The Afterparty (the book under review here).
The author of The Afterparty is the London-based writer Leo Benedictus. The author of The Afterparty is called William Mendez — we know this because The Afterparty consists of a series of draft chapters from The Afterparty sent via e-mail by Mendez to the agent he hopes will help to get it published, and the correspondence surrounding them.
The thing is, William Mendez isn’t actually called William Mendez. It’s a pseudonym — and because of the difficulty this presents in attending meetings with publishers, “William” ends up arranging for a writer called “Leo Benedictus” to pretend to have written the novel himself. After that, things start to get a bit complicated.
The first thing I was put in mind of as I read this was the luckless protagonist of Martin Amis’ The Information, whose unpublished novel has “octuple time schemes and a rotating crew of sixteen unreliable narrators.” Far from being unreadably mired in literary theory, though, The Afterparty — Benedictus’ first book — is a blast: an amusing satire of celebrity shenanigans, wrapped in glittery postmodern sweetie-wrappers.
It tells the story (well, The Afterparty tells the story, its multiple third-person viewpoints marked out by different typefaces) of the ritzy birthday party thrown in a London club for Hugo Marks, a film star who seems part Bill Nighy and part Hugh Grant.
Hugo is a melancholy figure. His supermodel wife, Mellody, is having it off with a scruffy young pop star and, after a futile session in rehab, is returning to coke, weed, ketamine, junk etc., with ferocious gusto. At Hugo’s party are a lot of glamorous real people from the real world — Elton John and such like — as well as fictitious people such as Calvin Vance, a recent X Factor winner with a silly haircut and a single in the charts.
Also at the party is the novel’s luckless antihero, Michael. Michael is a civilian — an Evening Standard sub who has sneaked along on someone else’s invitation in the hopes of getting a diary story. Benedictus, or “Benedictus,” or “William,” or whoever, writes feelingly and accurately about the hellishness of being a diarist at a celebrity party.
The kicking-off point of the plot is when Hugo falls into conversation with Michael. Sick of the usual entourage of hangers-on, he takes a shine to this nobody and asks him back to his house for the afterparty. There then unfolds a series of unfortunate events involving hard drugs, very good whisky, a dead body and a lot of police and tabloid journalists — with hapless Michael (Michael fits the word “hapless” as others would a Savile Row suit) mixed up in the middle of it.
As The Afterparty goes on, it starts to look like The Afterparty may be a roman a clef. Could “William Mendez” have more than just a literary interest in getting his manuscript out there — and be more invested in the true-life tragedy on which his book is based than he’s letting on?
As we ponder all this, we get cameo pleasures: a splendid couple of pages of dialogue about somebody having sex with a sheepdog, some fine descriptive writing (“one of those very Californian women ... beneath her patterned smock ... the dwindled bulk that might result from being rapidly inflated once (by disease? by grief?) and then let down again, leaving a body grooved with tawny corrugations, like a sundried Mama Cass”) and some enjoyably silly jokes.
Benedictus’ novel-within-a-novel trick is, cunningly, almost review-proof. How good a writer is “William Mendez” supposed to be? I think Benedictus is being puckish rather than conceited, for instance, when he has his fictional agent comment on the first few chapters: “I think this is marvelous. Stylish, funny, inventive ...”
And where William’s novel seems overwritten or awkward, how are we to know that is not Benedictus writing in character?
We know “Leo Benedictus” thinks “William’s” book is great: “I love the book — honestly.” (“William” reciprocates, praising “Leo’s” “hilarious” review of a book about penises in the Observer.) But Benedictus is keeping his counsel, so I guess readers will just have to make their own minds up.
I might add that this review was going to be a lot more unkind, but I bunged Benedictus 10 percent of my fee to review it under the name “Sam Leith.” “Sam Leith” liked it a lot.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
RSS